What should we make of the European parliament elections? The main story clearly is the collapse of Labour's vote but that was a disaster foretold. As each successive year of Labour in power has passed the party has done worse and worse in local, European and other elections.

But unlike the local and parliamentary elections in Britain where the norms of first-past-the-post voting dominate, leaving politics under the tutelage of the main parties with occasional eruptions by the SNP in Scotland or the BNP in some English municipal election, the European parliament vote reveals a rich landscape of voting behaviour and the chance for other parties to strut their stuff. In the European parliament election there is really only one central question – the EU itself.

The democratic left suffered serious defeats across Europe in the 2009 elections. The observations below are meant as short notes on aspects of what I learned campaigning both in my South Yorkshire constituency and in other parts of Europe. They are tentative and I hope those responding to them could leave to one side the abuse that any article by a politician provokes and instead help in saying which points are pertinent and which are irrelevant to the next stage of debate about what the democratic left does if we are to slow down and reverse the new hegemony of the centre and further right in Europe.

1. The European parliament is unloved. It might be better to link the election of some of its members to national parliament elections so that MEPs more accurately reflect the views of voters. National parliaments also need to become associated with European parliamentary work – perhaps by creating a second chamber formed from national MPs.

2. The voting turnout in Britain is lamentable. The BNP vote went down in numbers but because of the low turnout they could win seats thanks to a PR voting system. In 2004 turnout was much higher in regions which used all postal ballots. To be sure, there were some irregularities, but the scores of thousands of people who were empowered to vote were not all fraudsters.

3. Racism and xenophobia are now part and parcel of European elections. Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel made their views against the accession of Turkey, a majority Muslim nation, the archstone of their campaign. The manifesto of the centre-right EPP federation explicitly referred to Europe as a Judeo-Christian concept. No room for Muslims then.

The Federation of Poles of Great Britain recently published a dossier of 80 headlines from the Daily Mail which in their judgment amounted to anti-Polish xenophobia. This helps create the swamp the BNP grows in. The more Poles, Slovaks and other foreigners are presented by the right as a problem, the more the BNP and Ukip vote grows.

4. The BNP needs to be exposed. The Yorkshire Post reported on the racial abuse conviction of Andrew Brons, the new Yorkshire BNP MEP. But there was no national publicity. Searchlight continually briefed that the BNP had no real support and Labour's campaign excluded any direct attacks on the BNP. Even this morning the Today programme failed to mention the BNP's antisemitism. Brons is a Strasserite – obsessed with Nazi ideology. Griffin's record of Jew-hatred and racism makes clear his fascism. We need a cordon sanitaire around these people who now have access to the European parliament's funds which Nigel Farage reckons has given him £2m plus as an MEP. Equally, Labour must now speed up a social housing programme, support workers in the steel and other industries on a par with help given to banks, and bring in ID cards so we know who has a right to be in Britain and who has not.

5. The recession is not helping the left. Voters are scared, unsure about their jobs, earnings, savings, homes or children's future. The left's rhetoric and denunciation of open trade economics sounds tough in meetings and feels good in a column. But the left does well when there is growth, businesses are being created, which in turn create jobs, and citizens have money left to spend themselves rather than see it being transferred to state bureaucracies. The European right – both mainstream and extreme – are the winners in this election as voters become defensive and see no clear options from the democratic left.

6. In many ex-communist nations of east, central and Black Sea Europe, the re-branded communist parties eagerly accepted as born-again social democratic parties are now collapsing. Whole regions of Europe no longer have adequate democratic left party structures and presence.

7. In Britain, the Scottish question will soon become acute. While England and Wales vote Tory, Scotland responds to the European question by becoming more and more nationalist. Labour needs to produce a policy for England before it is too late.

8. Supporters of proportional representation have to work out whether giving the BNP keys to the Commons, along with other single issue groups like Ukip, is worth the price of moving to Nick Clegg's idea of PR. There are other forms of electoral-constitutional reform which may be worth implementing in place of the traditional PR demand, which would consolidate parliamentary facism on the basis of yesterday's result.

9. Labour has to take deep breaths and reduce its fever. A leadership putsch now followed by an unavoidable election, however much demanded by Daniel Hannan, Farage, and assorted rightwing columnists, would undermine the progressive cause in Britain for generations.

10. David Cameron was rejected by more than seven out of 10 voters yesterday. He now has to put in place his isolationist EU politics by breaking links with mainstream centre-right parties and creating an alliance with homophobic Polish rightists or a Czech party which has just lost power and whose leader thinks global warming is a myth. Labour and Lib Dems have to expose Tory isolationism as dangerous to British national interests.